Stress (role ambiguity, role conflict
and work overload), social support (supervisory support
and team support), job attitudes (organizational commitment
and job satisfaction), and job outcome (turnover intention)
across gender were studied among 240 information system
professionals. The results demonstrate that women experience
higher role ambiguity and supervisory support. Job attitudes
and job outcome do not differ across gender. Further, the
results do not confirm the findings of the earlier studies,
as it asserts that role ambiguity is positively and significantly
related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
The implications of research and practice have been discussed
thereafter.
India's abundant, high quality and cost-effective
services and its vast resource of skilled software human
power have made it an attractive destination for global
software clients. From a base of 6,800 knowledge workers
in 1985-86, the number increased to 522,000 software and
services professionals by the end of 2001-02 (Nasscom Report,
2003). It is estimated that out of these 522,000 knowledge
workers, almost 170,000 are working in the IT software
and services export industry, nearly 106,000 are working
in the IT-enabled services, and over 220,000 in user organizations.
The offshore software and BPO industries have provided
direct and indirect employment to approximately 700,000
professionals and 2.5 million workers (NASSCOM-McKinsey
Report, 2005). With the steady increase of females in both
software and BPO companies, NASSCOM has predicted that
women's involvement in software services will increase
further by 10% by 2007. With the increasing influx of women
professionals into the IT industry, it was estimated that
the male-female ratio specifically in IT jobs would be
65 men to 35 women by the end of the year 2005 (NASSCOM
Report, 2005).
As the gender dynamics of information
labor changes with the development of the information economy,
the inclusion of more women in the information workforce,
as compared with the workforce in the industrial era, has
increased, as evident from economic data. Thus, it is critical
to investigate the experiences of women in information
work, as their role has an increasing impact on the overall
growth and stability of the network economy. Moreover,
the critical issue is also revolving around procuring an
adequate pool of well-trained applicants, from which to
hire new employees. This further implies that the number
of qualified employees is diminishing—there is an
exigency to retain well-trained employees through various
ways, for instance, through lowering search, hire, training
and general turnover costs, boosting employee loyalty and
so on (Tapia et al., 2004). These problems could
be addressed with more consistent, higher quality, institutionalized,
systematic, industry-wide efforts at focusing on the job
attitudes of women in the IT workforce. This study aims
at providing clues to the building up of systematic industry-wide
efforts for recruiting and retaining women in the software
sector. |
